Birmingham’s NEC – A Sustainability Leader

On the heels of the recent UFI Open Seminar on Sustainability came a great story in Exhibition News written by Brian Pell, Operations Manager for the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England.

The article addressed a number of initiatives that facilities can undertake to make their venues sustainable. These include: Sophisticated lighting and heating systems, shuttle buses which in NEC’s case use economical Euro V engines, waste water management systems in washrooms, ISO 14001 accreditation and education and support to bring all stakeholders on board.

One initiative which stood out was NEC’s Waste Pre-Treatment Centre. In a nutshell the Waste Pre-treatment Center is a central depositor for all exhibit hall waste. With a sophisticated weighing technology the waste that was collected is sorted and bundled for recycling. It sounds simple enough and since its implementation in 2009 the amount of waste that is now being recycled rather than sent to landfill has doubled. Here are more surprising facts:

• In the last 12 months the system has weighed 1500 tonnes of waste, diverting 992 tonnes from landfill
• This has meant a financial saving of £47,600 , compared to the older method of transporting all waste to landfill
• They reported a reduction of 406 tonnes of CO2.

All in all an impressive initiative and a model for venues world-wide.